Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. It has various derived terms refer to different aspects of the fibers or patterns. Wood grain is important in woodworking and it impacts aesthetics.
Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers [1] or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. [2] R. Bruce Hoadley wrote that grain is a "confusingly versatile term" with numerous different uses, including the direction of the wood cells (e.g., straight grain, spiral grain), surface appearance or figure, growth-ring placement (e.g., vertical grain), plane of the cut (e.g., end grain), rate of growth (e.g., narrow grain), and relative cell size (e.g., open grain). [3]
The two basic categories of grain are straight grain and cross grain. Straight grain runs parallel to the longitudinal axis of the piece. Cross grain deviates from the longitudinal axis in two ways: spiral grain or diagonal grain. The amount of deviation is called the slope of the grain. [3]
In describing the alignment of the wood in the tree, a distinction may be made. Different tree species may have one of the following basic grain descriptions and types: [4]
An important physical aspect of wood grain in woodworking is the grain direction or slope (e.g., against the grain). In describing the application of a woodworking technique to a given piece of wood, the direction of the technique may be:
Woods with straight grains are the easiest to work, while woods with interlocked grains are the most difficult.
Grain alignment must be considered when joining pieces of wood, or designing wooden structures. For example, a stressed span is less likely to fail if tension is applied along the grain, rather than across the grain. Grain direction will also affect the type of warping seen in the finished item. [5]
In its simplest aesthetic meaning, wood grain is the alternating regions of relatively darker and lighter wood resulting from the differing growth parameters occurring in different seasons (i.e., growth rings) on a cut or split piece of wood.
Figure in wood is produced by causes including fungus, burls, stress, knots, and special grain alignments. Strictly speaking, grain is not always the same as the figure of wood. Figure rarity often promotes the value of both the raw material, and the finished work it becomes a part of. These include:
The way a given piece of wood has been sawn affects both its appearance and physical properties:
There is irregular grain in burr wood or burl wood, but this is result of very many knots.
Wood is a structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic material – a natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin that resists compression. Wood is sometimes defined as only the secondary xylem in the stems of trees, or it is defined more broadly to include the same type of tissue elsewhere such as in the roots of trees or shrubs. In a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up by themselves. It also conveys water and nutrients between the leaves, other growing tissues, and the roots. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or woodchips or fiber.
Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes, including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing. Lumber has many uses beyond home building. Lumber is sometimes referred to as timber in England, Australia and New Zealand, while in most parts of the world the term timber refers specifically to unprocessed wood fiber, such as cut logs or standing trees that have yet to be cut.
Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.
Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object. The phrase may also refer to the finished product, from individual sculptures to hand-worked mouldings composing part of a tracery.
In woodworking, a rip-cut is a type of cut that severs or divides a piece of wood parallel to the grain. The other typical type of cut is a cross-cut, a cut perpendicular to the grain. Unlike cross-cutting, which shears the wood fibers, a rip saw works more like a series of chisels, lifting off small splinters of wood. The nature of the wood grain requires the shape of the saw teeth to be different thus the need for both rip saws and crosscut saws; however some circular saw blades are combination blades and can make both types of cuts. A rip cut is the fundamental type of cut made at a sawmill.
In gemology, chatoyancy, or chatoyance or cat's eye effect, is an optical reflectance effect seen in certain gemstones, woods, and carbon fibre. Coined from the French œil de chat, meaning 'cat's eye', chatoyancy arises either from the fibrous structure of a material, as in tiger's eye quartz, or from fibrous inclusions or cavities within the stone, as in cat's eye chrysoberyl.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as "the mysteries of the turners' guild." The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
A log house, or log building, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs may be round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted or milled. The term "log cabin" generally refers to a smaller, more rustic log house, such as a hunting cabin in the woods, that may or may not have electricity or plumbing.
A burl or burr is a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner. It is commonly found in the form of a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch that is filled with small knots from dormant buds. Burl formation is typically a result of some form of stress such as an injury or a viral or fungal infection.
Clapboard, also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping.
Wood shingles are thin, tapered pieces of wood primarily used to cover roofs and walls of buildings to protect them from the weather. Historically shingles, also known as shakes, were split from straight grained, knot free bolts of wood. Today shingles are mostly made by being cut which distinguishes them from shakes, which are made by being split out of a bolt.
In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood and sometimes bark that typically are glued onto core panels to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry. Plywood consists of three or more layers of veneer. Normally, each is glued with its grain at right angles to adjacent layers for strength. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging placed around objects, such as jewelry boxes. Veneer is also used to replace decorative papers in wood veneer HPL.
Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called radially-sawn or simply quartered. There is widespread confusion between the terms rift sawn and quarter sawn with the terms defined both with opposite meanings and as synonyms.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Bird's eye is a type of figure that occurs within several kinds of wood, most notably in hard maple. It has a distinctive pattern that resembles tiny, swirling eyes disrupting the smooth lines of grain. It is somewhat reminiscent of a burl, but it is quite different: the small knots that make the burl are missing.
In woodworking, a knee is a natural or cut, curved piece of wood. Knees, sometimes called ships knees, are a common form of bracing in boat building and occasionally in timber framing. A knee rafter in carpentry is a bent rafter used to gain head room in an attic.
Rift sawing is a woodworking process that aims to produce lumber that is less vulnerable to distortion than flat-sawn lumber. Rift-sawing may be done strictly along a log's radials—perpendicular to the annular growth ring orientation or wood grain—or as part of the quarter sawing process.
The conservation and restoration of wooden artifacts refers to the preservation of art and artifacts made of wood. Conservation and restoration in regards to cultural heritage is completed by a conservator-restorer.
Flat sawing, flitch sawing or plain sawing is a woodworking process that produces flat-cut or plain-cut boards of lumber.
